


Crick Crack

by Decepticonsensual



Series: The Festival of Mortilus [1]
Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Ghost Stories, Halloween
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-31
Updated: 2014-10-31
Packaged: 2018-02-23 08:53:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,970
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2541725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Decepticonsensual/pseuds/Decepticonsensual
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's the Festival of Mortilus, an ancient feast celebrating the Guiding Hand's victory over Death, which means the Lost Light is full of drunken revelry... and ghost stories.  Join the circle and listen as some of the ship's oldest denizens tell tales of revenge - and love - from beyond the grave.</p><p>Written for a Halloween prompt from Scraplette on Tumblr:  "Either Cyclonus, Rung or Ratchet telling a ghost story would be fun, as the oldest guys around you can bet they’ve either heard some things or even had their own supernatural encounter."  (Warnings for basic campfire-story creepiness, nothing super-gory.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Crick Crack

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Scraplette](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scraplette/gifts).



“… And the third night, I heard it again, that cold  _scritch-scratch,_ as I was packing up my things.  This time, though, I’d had enough.  So I went back to the operating room – I was sure someone had to be playing a joke on me – and  _what do you think I saw_?”

The room was so quiet you could hear a pin drop, as the small cluster of mechs, their optics flared wide, hung on Ratchet’s every word.  The medic scanned the circle, pausing just long enough that he knew their imaginations had to be conjuring up the most horrific possibilities.  Then he whispered, “I saw that same scalpel, the one made out of the dead mech’s metal,  _moving on its own._ And as I watched, it dragged itself across the table,  _scritch-scratch, scritch-scratch._ Finally, it reached the other instruments and started to move over them… and each one it touched began to  _twitch_ …” Ratchet’s fingers jerked convulsively, and Tailgate squeaked.  “Slowly, so slowly, they rose, and started to link together – scalpels and saws, clamps and polarisers, fusing to each other.  I saw them take on the shape of a person.  It was gruesome.  It didn’t have a head; its limbs kept shifting and oozing back together as it shambled across the floor.  It would have three limbs, then five, then four, but it kept  _coming_ … and as it clanked towards me, it spoke.”

“What did it say?” someone breathed, horrified, and Ratchet glared around the room at the interruption, before harrumphing and folding his hands.

“It gave me a weather forecast and the day’s lottery numbers, whadda ya  _think_?”  His voice dipped back down into a whisper as he said, “It called me by  _name_.  ‘Raaaatchet…  _Raaaa-cheeeet…_ ’”  Ratchet’s voice had gone thin and sing-song, and his listeners could almost hear in it the sighing swish of all those deadly-sharp blades moving through the air as one awful whole.  “‘Raaaa-cheeeeeet, you stole my frame from me.  You took me and you twisted me into  _this_  – but I can live again.  Ohhhh, I can live again.  I have my mind, and I have the metal.  All I need now is the spark.’”  Ratchet suddenly lunged forward in his seat, the light throwing stark shadows across his face and making him look half-demonic.  “’ _Yours will do!’_

All of his listeners started, and more than a few pushed themselves away from him.  There was even a muffled scream.  Ratchet sat back, satisfied.

“So, of course, I scrambled backwards and initiated security lockdown.  The door to the operating theatre came crashing down between us.  Now, let me tell you about this door – it was clear, reinforced tetra-samonite,  _meters_ thick.  Nothing was getting through that… or so I hoped.  Just in case, I ran and got a blaster from the security desk, and went back to stand guard outside the door.  As I came back, I saw that the thing had started trying to scrape away at the inside of the door.  _Scrape.  Scrape.  Scraaaape._

“I sat there all night, my blaster pointed at the door, watching that monstrosity scrape away at it, listening to that awful noise.  Its form became clearer as it got closer and closer to breaking through.  Towards dawn, it was getting so clear that I could practically count its seams.  Then the first few rays of light crept through the windows.  Before my optics, the original scalpel shivered and fell still, tumbling to the ground.  At that moment, all of the other instruments fell apart, and lay as if they had never moved at all.

“When I was sure they’d all stopped moving, I opened the door, and I realised that only a few millimeters of material remained of that meters-thick door.  The monster had been only moments away from breaking through.”

“What did you do?” Rewind prompted after a suitable pause.

“Only thing I  _could_ do.  I took the scalpel and finally laid it to rest in the smelter.  Did the funeral rites and all.  The next night, I kept watch to see if any of the other instruments would start moving on me, but they never did.”

He grinned wolfishly.   _“Yet._ And that’s the story, kids, and that’s why you never make a medical tool from the metal of a dead mech.”

“I thought you didn’t believe in restless spirits and rituals, Ratchet,” Drift remarked slyly.

The medic grimaced.  “I don’t, you young idiot!  It’s a  _story_ , that’s all, just a typical Festival of Mortilus tall tale.  You really will latch onto anything, won’t you, Drift?”

 Drift started to argue back, but the bickering was interrupted by a deep, cool voice saying, “In  _my_ day, we did not profane the Festival of Mortilus with false tales.  All stories told on this day were true.”

Ratchet cast an acid look at where Cyclonus was sitting apart, sharpening his sword (effortlessly, even though the bar was lit only by a few golden Mortilus lanterns) and looking for all the world as though he wasn’t interested in what the rest of them were even doing there.  “Well, well, he speaks.  I take it that means you’ve got a  _true_ ghost story to tell, Cyclonus?”

“I have them,” Cyclonus corrected him gravely, “but not to tell.”

The bar burst out into a flurry of protests, as virtually every mech in the audience clamoured for Cyclonus to let them hear, and Rewind all but begged for a genuine ancient ghost story to add to his archives.  Cyclonus merely shook his head, until Whirl broke in, “Come on, everyone, leave poor Cyclonus alone.”  His optic narrowed in mirth.  “Poor baby doesn’t want anyone realising he’s  _so obviously full of slag._ ”

“Am I?”  Cyclonus’s voice was soft.  “I spent six million years in the Dead Universe.  I have witnessed more horrors, and seen more of the living dead, than any mech alive.  Or have you all forgotten the D-Void so quickly?”  A collective shiver ran through the audience.

Except for Tailgate, who, after a moment’s thought, reached up and tugged on Cyclonus’s arm.  “Maybe not a story about the Dead Universe, I can see why you don’t want to think about that, but – maybe you could tell us a story from before?  I’m sure you remember some from our day, right?”

Cyclonus looked down, and something about the grim lines of his mouth softened; for a second, it was as if he and Tailgate were the only two in the room.  “Very well.”

Bowing his head, Cyclonus in-vented deeply.  His voice took on the deep, ringing tone of recitation.  “Hear, O children of Primus!  Hear that you might understand what is death, the grip of Mortilus from which the Guiding Hand have freed us.  ‘Til all are one.”

“’Til all are one,” the others murmured, eagerly or grudgingly or by rote, and they clustered closer to Cyclonus to listen.

“Long ago, before the Golden Age of our kind began, I was but a young warrior, travelling with my comrades from world to world to smite the enemies of Cybertron.”  An amused-looking Skids turned to Swerve and mouthed  _Smite?,_ but Cyclonus pushed on, ignoring him.  “My amica endura at that time was a mech from Altihex, a fighter so bold that he would go into battle  _singing_.”  Cyclonus hummed a few bars of what everyone onboard (thanks to repeated exposure) now recognised as  _Glory to Cybertron, Glinting in the Heavens!_  “The enemy forces would recoil from him, rightly believing that only a warrior of great power would dare to take to the field as though the risk were nothing.  But one day, my friend’s confidence proved his undoing.  He overreached himself in battle, and in the soil and filth of some distant barbarian planet, he fell.”

Cyclonus paused, and Tailgate, his wide optics shining with concern, nestled closer to him.

“We interred him, and we mourned him.”  For a moment, the ancient warrior’s voice grew thick, and faltered; then he picked up as smoothly as if nothing had happened.  “And the centuries passed.  One night, many years later, I was back on Cybertron, and making my way over the Mithril Sea when I saw a mist rolling down from the mountains.”  The assembled mecha shuddered.  Mist was not as damaging as rain, but it could be more treacherous, appearing abruptly to blanket the world and seep under your plating, corroding the wires beneath.

“It was upon me before I could plot a course around it, and it rose up around me like the walls of a cell.  I could not climb above it, because I could no longer discern up from down.  I could try to outrun it, but I had no way of knowing whether I was heading away, or into the thick of it – or simply flying in circles.  Worse, I could feel it slithering into my seams, like a sentient thing, seeking my core and burning as it went…”  Cyclonus allowed himself a thin smile at the horrified noises surrounding him.  “I would not surrender to the pain, but I began to think that I had seen my last sunrise this side of the Afterspark.  And then, abruptly, my sensors were blinded.  When they cleared, I perceived a ball of golden light hovering before me.  It lingered just long enough for me to spot it, and then it began to move off.  With no other choice, I followed it.  I had heard stories of strange spirits above the Mithril Sea:  phantoms that lead travelers out into the desert to die, or trick them into crashing in the mountains.”  The few other flyers in the room were nodding.  “But I was already beginning to die.  I thought to myself that either the light would deliver me from the mist, or it would find a way to kill me, but at least my death was likely to be quick.

“And then, just then, the light began to hum.”

Cyclonus paused and hummed deep in his chest, a rumbling note that quickly rose, turning unmistakably into  _Glory to Cybertron, Glinting in the Heavens!_

“And I knew then that my friend had returned to me.”

Whirl let out a derisive cackle, and a few of the other bots looked skeptical – but not all.  Drift was listening with big, solemn optics.  In the corner, Sunstreaker was staring, even as he reached down and scratched Bob’s antennae absently.  Even First Aid was oddly still.

“He led me out of the mist,” Cyclonus concluded, “and the moment I was clear, he vanished.  I never told my comrades what I had seen, because I knew they would call it a trick of the mists.  But I knew better.  From the Afterspark itself, my amica endura had reached out to save my life.”

“That’s, like, the least scary Mortilus story I’ve ever  _heard_ ,” a voice scoffed, and there were a few murmurs of agreement.  Cyclonus’s mouth set in a hard line, and he stood.

“Spoiled  _children,_ ” he murmured as he walked to the door.

“Hey, what did you guys have to do that for?”  Tailgate sounded so genuinely upset that several mechs looked away guiltily.  Whirl, however, leaned forward and clacked his claws.

“Right!  My turn.”  His optic narrowed as he looked around the circle.  “This is the story,” he began in a sinister hiss, “of the most  _adorable_ –“

“ _No._ ”  Ratchet was on his feet, arms crossed.

“What d’ya mean,  _no_?”

“No, as in  _no,_ what this party needs is not the fifteenth installment of _The Adventures of Yippy the Turbofox and How He Cutely Disembowels Everyone Whirl Doesn’t Like._ ”

“ _Spoilers,_ Doc, yeesh!”

“Rung,” Ratchet continued, speaking over the copter.  “Come on.  Help us out.   _You’ve_ got to have a whole stash of anecdotes; why don’t you tell us the creepiest one you can remember?  Or, you know,  _any one_ that isn’t about psychotic turbofoxes.”

“Oh, my goodness.”  Rung smiled.  “I may have been around for quite a while, but my days are ordinary, really.  Well, before this journey, at any rate.  My most exciting stories are about my patients –” Whirl tensed visibly, but relaxed as Rung continued – “and I wouldn’t break their confidentiality to share those.”

Rewind broke in, “But you’ve seen so much of Cybertron’s history!  Or what about stories you’ve heard, or read?  Please, Rung!”

“Well.”  Rung looked a little unsettled at all the attention.  “I suppose I could… or… wait.  I may have a story of my own, about someone who wasn’t quite a patient of mine.  I don’t think he’d mind my sharing.”

He folded his long legs and started the traditional call-and-response, although without Cyclonus’s flair:  “Hear, O children of Primus…” 

When the last, “’Til all are one,” faded away, Rung began.

“It was a long, long time ago, just before the war, and I was working with a fuel exploration team at the outer edge of known space.  It was felt that the isolation and the sheer vastness of the unexplored void beyond could play havoc with a person’s mind – not to mention that we were working perilously close to a singularity of an unknown type, which Cybertron’s scientists had not yet begun to map, and the effects could be unpredictable – so the government wanted a psychiatrist along on the trip.”  He sighed.  “To this day, I am uncertain whether they wanted me to  _help_ the scientists on the team, or merely to study how they unravelled, for future reference.  Needless to say, I had my own ideas, and they were very firmly in the former category.

“At any rate, no sooner had I settled into my new office than there was a tap on the door, very soft.  I opened it and saw a mech standing there.  Tall, broadly built; I couldn’t quite make out his alt, but I’m hardly in a position to judge people on that score.”  Rung smiled wanly.  “I assumed he must be my first appointment, though I remember thinking it odd that I’d received no medical file.  I had him fill out the standard forms instead, and then I sat him down and asked what was bothering him.

“He wouldn’t answer.  He refused to talk about himself at all, in fact.  He had one question, just one.  He asked me, ‘Why do you think people die?’

“Well, at first I kept trying to understand what lay behind this question.  I asked if he had had thoughts of his own death; if he wanted to die; if he had lost someone.”

Rewind’s camera light was glowing avidly, but he was able to spare enough concentration to lace his fingers through Chromedome’s when his conjunx surreptitiously slid his hand into Rewind’s.

Rung shook his head.  “Finally, I simply asked him point-blank:  ‘Why do you want to know?’  He looked confused, and then he said, ‘No, no, don’t you see?   _I_ already know.  I want to see if you do.  I want to know whether you – whether  _any_ of you – understand.’

“I could see I would get no further unless I at least ventured an answer, but I didn’t want to seem as though I were telling him what to believe.  So, instead, I gave him options:  I took him through every school of thought I could remember, and explored what each had to say about death.  Death is the ultimate transformation; death makes us one with Primus; death clears away obsolete organisms to make way for their more sophisticated successors; death prevents us from covering the entire galaxy and using up all its fuel; death completes the cycle and leads us into rebirth.  I talked about the victory of the Guiding Hand over Mortilus, and how difficult it actually is for us to die, compared to the organic species of the universe.  He listened to every word in silence.

“And when I reached the end, he simply shook his head.”

Rung paused, as if a little reluctant to continue.

“I’d lowered my head to make a note of his response, and as I did, I heard him say, very quietly, ‘None of them understand.  Perhaps we _should_ wipe the slate clean and start over.’  It was an unnerving thing to hear, and I opened my mouth to ask what he meant by it.”  Rung studied his hands.  “When I lifted my head, he was gone.

“And that’s when I noticed the signature on the form I’d given him – suddenly, it was the only piece of writing on the form at all, despite the fact that I’d watched him fill it in front and back.  That signature looked…” Rung drew a stylus and a pad from his subspace.  “Like this.”

He sketched a glyph and turned it around for them to see.  Abruptly, the whole circle was scrabbling backwards, with whispers of, “Primus spare my spark!” and protective gestures.  The name was familiar, even in the antique script of the Primal Vernacular.  It was the name written on all the lanterns, after all.

_Mortilus._

*

Hours later, Ratchet, who’d been watching Skids recite a ghostly love story from before the age of the Senate, glanced back over his shoulder and murmured, a little tipsily, “Rung?”

“Yes, Ratchet?”

“What’s the answer?  Why  _do_ people die?  In your opinion.”

“I don’t know.  You’d have to ask Mortilus.”

Ratchet snorted inelegantly.

Rung only smiled.  “I take it you didn’t put much stock in the rest of the stories tonight, either?  Including your own?”

“Oh, please.  It’s good fun, but Mortilus stories are fairy tales, in the end.  A light in the mist is just a light, no matter how much you want it to be the spark of someone you lost.”  Ratchet held out his hands in front of him; in the dim light of the bar, the red-painted plating could be blue, and it would be difficult to tell.  “And dead metal is just dead metal.”

**Author's Note:**

> You can see the (illustrated!) adventures of Yippy the Turbofox here: http://decepticonsensual.tumblr.com/post/99977653923/rodimiss-this-isnt-supposed-to-make-sense, courtesy of the awesome Rodimiss.


End file.
